‘India Occupied Pakistan’? WE becoming part of YOU will only be your headache

‘India Occupied Pakistan’? WE becoming part of YOU will only be your headache

Kashmir Day and Valentine’s Day fall in February. Mix both and you get sugar, spice, and a fight. With Hrithik Roshan’s Fighter, you get a well-spent national holiday with a side of halwa puri. In this 2 hours and 40-odd minutes, we relive the 2019 India-Pakistan saga with a tadka of green eyes, red nose, kohl, flirting enemies and the usual baap hum hain, aap-janab starter pack.

This is not Border; this is not Gadar. Fighter starts from where the great battle of Baghpat with crazy uncles ended in 2021. Of course with dandas minus the warplanes and a kiss. No wonder that the film’s director has been complaining how 90 per cent Indians have never flown in an airplane so they never understood a thing. And if they had, Patty would be flying in and out of Pakistan on an airbus with 90 per cent Indians onboard. A potential plot for Fighter 2: how to make Akhand Bharat in your dreams.

No Abhinandan, no chai

Here Patty aka pretty Indian Air Force officer in a tight one piece, not a bikini, wows in thousand punches: “POK ka matlab hai Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Occupy tumne kiya hai, malik hum hain.” Definitely not quoting from Pakistan’s school textbooks. It would be scary if it was somebody else and not Hrithik Roshan warning that if India comes down to badtameezi, Pakistan will become “India Occupied Pakistan”. Given the current account deficit, Pakistan might just take Patty up on his offer! WE becoming part of YOU will only be your headache.

The fact that there was no Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman in Fighter and hence no mention of the world-famous “tea is fantastic”, was a bummer. What is an India-Pakistan conflict without that cup of chai offered to Abhinandan? The receipt and mug of Abhinandan is now displayed at Pakistan Air Force museum for posterity. How do you make a film without such crucial details? What Pakistan now celebrates every 27 February as its victory of downing an Indian jet and capturing a soldier.

Of course, we find out that Fighter is only loosely based on real events; when it gets fictional, 80 per cent of the film has ended. Since the known Pakistan and Indian history of this episode (and the four wars fought) varies, they say they killed terrorists in Balakot. We say there were some pine trees and one crow. But at least both sides agree there were warplanes involved.

Red eye, red nose

Red Nose, a Pakistani sorma wearing officer and the one-red-eye jihadi will give you a red heartache if not an attack. Heartening to see here that the Pakistani pilot has more time to come up with the best verbal comebacks and collect girl gossip on his adversary. The team of his Indian adversaries, meanwhile, is busy dancing to Aaj sher khul gaey amid a high volatile border tension. Looks like the red nose character is inspired from former director general of military PR, Asif Ghafoor, whose boastful tweets kept us all entertained in those blue days.

In this multiverse, imagine Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as the jihadi villain Azhar Akhtar but with Keratin hair treatment and a conjunctivitis-like red eye who walks in and out of the offices of Pakistan military at will. Almost like he lives in GHQ. He tells these Generals what needs to be done, as if he owns them. But what do we know? If Emraan Hashmi (as Aatish Rehman) can be in a proverbial lip lock with Pakistani Generals against Pakistani politicians in Tiger 3, then anything is possible in love and films. Maybe RAW agent Tiger can be asked to save democracy in Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2024 election results, which have created more turbulence.

The single super success of ISI in a year has been Deepika Padukone—from a good ISI agent doing insaniyat ki khidmat in Pathaan, she has ended up as an IAF officer in Fighter. Even ISI wouldn’t have expected this quick turnaround. This is unlike the RAW agents who apparently have their passports handy when on a killing spree in Pakistan. Agents, learn from Deepika. Also, that kissing in uniform after the mission is accomplished should win her a part as Pakistani Army chief in the next movie.

The author is a journalist from Pakistan. Her Twitter handle is @nailainayat. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)